Audyssey Audio Dock review

Can this £350 speaker dock best its Audio Dock Air sibling for sound?

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Our Verdict

For

Great sound quality

Dock can hold all iOS devices

App to tweak sound quality

Against

Rear of the unit runs a little hot

It's obvious right from the start that the Audyssey Audio Dock (South of Market Edition) is no ordinary speaker dock. Weighing in at a hefty 4.1kg, its wedge-shaped design oozes attention to detail, from its strokable matte black finish to the fact that its substantial 30-pin connector arm is solid enough to hold an iPad with ease.

Its stark finish is alleviated by white LED indicator lights on the front and a white backlit Play/Pause button on the top. On its rear you'll find a USB 2.0 port that you can use to sync it with iTunes on your Mac. It also has Bluetooth A2DP inside, so you can stream music to it wirelessly if you wish.

Although you can't tweak the sound from the Audyssey Audio Dock using any onboard controls, the free-to-download South Of Market Audio Dock app, enables you to tweak the sound settings as you choose.

Not that you'll need to tweak them all that much, mind. With two tweeters, two woofers and four discrete amplifiers on board, the Audyssey Audio Dock is capable of delivering fantastic sound quality right out of the box.

The solid build quality helps eliminate any rattles no matter how hard you push the volume, yet the Audio Dock also manages to sound sweet even at modest volumes. Unlike the Audyssey Audio Dock Air, the Audio Dock delivers a carefully balanced sound that gives your music considerable bass weight (where needed) without ever overwhelming the mid-range or treble.

The result is one of the best audio performances we've heard outside of the much pricier B&W Zeppelin Air. The only slight catch, as with other monolithic speaker docks we've heard, is that you won't get much in the way of true stereo separation.